Tennessee Aquarium introduces 7 critically endangered baby turtles

An Arakan Forest Turtle (Heosemys depressa) hatches at the Tennessee Aquarium. Doug Strickland

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) — The Tennessee Aquarium has just hatched seven critically endangered turtles.

Habitat destruction has caused a great difficulty for the Arakan Forest Turtle. They are now mostly found in Myanmar and Bangladesh, the aquarium stated.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, these creatures have declined in population by 80% over the last 75 years.

The aquarium said these hatchings were 100% successful.

Plus, this is the largest group of Arakan Forest Turtles to ever hatch at an accredited facility. The second largest group was at Zoo Atlanta in 2013.

Arakan Forest Turtle (Heosemys depressa) hatched at the Tennessee Aquarium. Doug Strickland

“The fact that all seven eggs hatched is really great,” says Aquarium Herpetology Coordinator Bill Hughes. “Every individual that hatches is a small victory because it’s one more in the population in human care when their population in the wild is declining.”

The aquarium adds that only six AZA-accredited facilities care for this breed of turtle.

The Tennessee Aquarium’s first two Arakan turtles hatched in 2023. They said these were the first addition to this species in human care since 2017.

“Having a viable population spread across zoos and aquariums is important. Then, if something happened to the last few in the wild, they wouldn’t be totally extinct,” he says. “If we hatch enough babies — hopefully, we do this again next year and have some surplus — we can send them out to other zoos and get them excited about these guys again.”

These turtles will soon be publicly viewed in a turtle nursery at the aquarium’s River Journey building.

The aquarium attributes the decline in their population to wildlife trafficking. Read more about that here.